“Well,” Edwards said. “I wasn’t but eight years old, and I treed a fat old daddy raccoon one Saturday night at twilight, right in our own front yard. My mama said it’d be a sin if I shot and dressed one of God’s creatures on the Sabbath, so I asked her for my blanket and my catechism and sat under that chestnut tree all night and all day Sunday, studying the sacraments and waiting to shoot that varmint. I kept the Sabbath and the raccoon, both.” Charles leaned back against the wall and chuckled. “He was so big, Mama made me two caps—one boy-sized and one man-sized. When I outgrew the one, she lopped off the tail and sewed it onto the other.”
Caroline watched the smoke from the men’s pipes twine together as they all laughed. She blew out a long, silent exhale, envisioning how the smoke of her breath would meld with the tobacco smoke were they sitting outside before a campfire instead of under the good roof Charles had built with Edwards’s nails. It was moments like these that she had envied when Charles had gone to help build Edwards’s house, moments when the thread of one story joined into the next, forming a lattice of shared memories. The thread extended toward her now, well within reach, if she dared unlock her store of memories to grasp it.
“I remember—” Caroline ventured. The men turned toward her, the lift of their brows encouraging. “It was the year we were married, Charles. Thomas and Papa Frederick strung up a swing on the big maple tree beside the riverbank for Lottie. My half sister,” she explained to Edwards, “she must have been six or seven years old. It was a perfect place for a swing, all smothered in shade, and the river so near, you felt as if you might sail straight over it and land on your feet on the opposite bank.” The smell of that place wafted through her mind, green and silvery and dappled with yellow sun. “We called it Lottie’s swing, though the big boys and girls used it just as much as she did, never mind that every one of us was at least ten years older than she. Lottie never complained, until the day one of the cows decided to take a swing.” Edwards’s face twitched. He squinted at her, to see if he were being teased. Caroline went on without a stroke of embellishment. “That cow walked up to the plank seat, put her front feet through, and she was stuck. She couldn’t walk more than three steps before the swing scraped her udder, and she didn’t know how to back out. Oh, how that cow bawled.” The men snorted with laughter, even Charles, who knew the story as well as she did. She might have stopped there, but the memory, once loosened, begged to be stretched to its full length. “Lottie just shrieked, she was so taken aback. That was the only time in my life I saw Papa Frederick come running. It winded him so, he wheezed like a broken penny whistle when he laughed. Thomas had to cut the ropes to get the cow out. Lottie cried and cried. She declared she wouldn’t drink a drop of milk until Thomas fixed the swing.” Edwards shook his head and slapped his thigh, and Caroline feasted on the knowledge that he would tell this story by the light of campfires and hearths for years to come.
It was as fine a day as Caroline could remember. She felt it tapering to a close well before Edwards pocketed his pipe and looked resignedly at his coat. “Let me at least warm it by the fire,” Caroline offered.
Edwards raised his palms to her. “I’ve stayed longer than I ought to already,” he said, rising, “and I’m as warm as I’m likely to be. Once I get into the creek, it won’t matter if you’ve set me ablaze, coat and all.”
Caroline winced. She had forgotten the creek. The water would be black, its cold surface like a blade against the skin. The moon was no more than the width of an onion skin.
“You know you’re welcome to stay,” Charles said.
Edwards shrugged into his coat. “And I thank you.”
“You’ll come back if the current is too high,” Caroline added. He wouldn’t, she knew that, but it bore saying.
Edwards touched his mittened fingers to Carrie’s belly and gave her a jiggle. “Next year it’ll be your turn for a treat from Santa Claus, little miss,” he told her. He looked at Mary and Laura, content in their beds, and nodded to himself. Their happiness bolstered him, Caroline mused, as if they were his own.
Had he been Henry, or Peter, Caroline would have taken hold of his arms and leaned her cheek against his then. Instead she laid a hand on his sleeve and pressed, gently. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Edwards,” she said.
His long, flat smile all but cut his face in two. “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Ingalls,” he replied.
Twenty-Nine
They prepared for the purchase of the plow, both she and Charles, as though it were an impending birth. When they ate from their first harvest, it would join them with the land, not unlike how Mary had joined them. Her existence had fused them in a way they could not otherwise achieve, even when their bodies were linked one within the other. So it would be with the plow and the prairie. The blade would part the soil, so that it could be filled with seeds. As soon as the crops had put down roots and began reaching up out of the ground, there would be no mistaking to whom this quarter section belonged. After that, the papers and the filing were a formality.
Every pelt nailed to the cabin wall, scraped clean, and worked soft before the fire was as good as a banknote, stacked up against the purchase. All winter long, the talk was of little else. While they worked, they spoke of the seeds Charles would buy, not only this year but the next and the next, and of which section of earth would best suit each variety. Charles had every acre mapped out in his mind, and he could twist and turn his plans for each one like a kaleidoscope. Hearing him talk night after night of the varying patterns, Caroline savored the knowledge that the plow was already rooting Charles to the land. From time to time he must hunt, of course, but the planting, watering, and hoeing required that he stay within earshot of the cabin. With luck, Caroline promised herself, she and the girls might never be alone with the Indians again.
There was no time for music that season. Instead there was the rhythmic slop and slap of brain slurry rubbed onto dried hides. Charles brought her the brains, which she screwed into canning jars until they were needed. If it was cold enough, they were put out to freeze. When it was not, she put the jars in a pail and lowered them down into the cool shaft of the well.
Once a hide was scraped and stretched and dried and soaked, Caroline heated a bowl of water on the hearth until it was just warm enough to bathe a baby. Then she unjarred a brain and kneaded it into the warm water, grinding the soft bits between her fingertips to form the milky slurry that Charles would rub into the rawhide to tan it.